Alan Gregory, with the Kentucky fire marshal's office, center, digs through debris from the fatal house fire that killed nine people last week in Depoy, Ky.

Written by

Mark Boxley
| The Courier-Journal

It was a frigid 2 degrees on Jan. 29 when the 11 members of the Watson family were sleeping in their Depoy, Ky., home, using a wall-mounted baseboard heater to pump warm air into the house.

Sometime around 2 a.m.. combustible items near the heater caught fire, authorities said. The flames quickly spread through the Muhlenberg County home and killed nine members of the family, including a mother and eight children. The father and an 11-year-old daughter were sent to hospitals in Nashville with serious injuries.

Space heaters cause about one-third of all winter house fires and 80 percent of all ...